90-Degrees off course...
January 4th, 2008 - Day 179 6.2420N,171.5217W
The progress over the last week has been wonderful, during which I gained quite a bit of distance due west. But the last few days brought relentless ESE winds which have now set the sea to carry my boat back near the main counter current north of me. That secondary counter current from the southwest which Dane Clark had mentioned earlier, may be the culprit, merging with the main at about where I am now. When I row, I can put a bit more west into my course, but overall this boat is heading NW. Fortunately I know that even if I have to deal again with my old nemesis the counter current, the ENE and NE trade winds will eventually bring me back south.
After all the movement west with practically no south gained, my hopes of reaching the Equator early to ride the summer winds toward Samoa are gone. I now give it one percent chance that I can go clockwise around Fiji to pass south of Caledonia toward Mooloolaba.
My guess is that I will very likely reach a point NW of Fiji near the island of Rotuma, then turn west to pass among the Vanuatu islands, navigating north of Caledonia, aiming for Cairns across the Coral Sea. The Great Barrier Reef will provide us all with some last minute excitement, no doubt, if the cyclones spare me in March. I may consider a stop over along the way to time my Coral Sea passage after the cyclone season. That is not a worry now unless I am within reach of a safe intermediate landing.
Any farther west that the sea takes me, the more likely that I will end up at Daru in the Torres Straits, or at Port Moresby further east, both of which will create enormous logistical challenges to recover the boat and to resume my human powered journey. I will face that challenge if such is the case...
On my GPS chartplotter, I finally entered charted territory. On Dec 29, 16,404ft (5,000m) depth contour lines and the Campbell Trench on the ocean floor were under my boat. On January 1, the odometer rolled past the 6,000nm mark. As recently as two days ago, I spotted a Lesser Frigate Bird. These roosting birds and the noddy terns do not normally venture too far from land, so when I see one, friends worry. But the nearest land shown on my chartplotter is the island of Palmyra, about 550nm due east of me.
Among the shearwaters, noddies, Sooty Terns and the occasional booby, White Terns are frequently present. This bird which is a bit larger than the Storm Petrel, and a touch smaller than the Sooty Tern, is entirely white except for its black beady eyes and black pointed beak. Our ornithologist friend Pepper Trail says: "This lovely and delicate tern of the tropics used to be called Fairy Tern, a much more suitable name, but that has now been assigned to a more ordinary Australian species. White Terns are famous for laying their single eggs on precarious spots such as slight depressions on top of tree branches, and then balancing there as they incubate through the wind and rain."
Erden. |
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